Blizzard Entertainment Inc’s popular digital collectible card game, Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft, turned two years old last week, and with a new expansion and the introduction of game formats arriving soon, there are some major changes coming just around the corner.

In a recent interview with PC Gamer, Lead Designer Ben Brode talked about what he’s learned in the last two years, and how that has affected the future direction of the game.

One particular change Brode discussed is the lack of the Inspire mechanic in the upcoming Whispers of the Old Gods expansion. Inspire is a minion trait that causes something to happen whenever a player uses their hero power. For example, Confessor Paletress summons a random legendary minion every time a player uses their hero power.

Brode explained that some features may only be part of the game for a short time, but just because they are phased out of one expansion doesn’t mean they will be gone forever.

“I think, in general, it’s interesting when things come and go,” Brode said. “Sometimes we’ll experiment with ideas and they won’t come back.”

“I think it’s very unlikely that we’ll have more cultists, for example, in future sets, because they won’t feel like they belong in whatever we explore next. So I think it’s fine for us to explore, then take a break from it, and maybe we’ll go back and maybe we won’t. We’re also trying to come up with new cool ideas.”

Brode noted that Inspire was a somewhat difficult mechanic to balance, but he believes that there were several Inspire cards that were successful, including Nexus-Champion Saraad and Murloc Knight.

“I think we did learn a lot about Inspire, but I don’t think it’s inherently broken,” he said. “We could explore that again in the future.”

Blizzard has already revealed a few new mechanics arriving in the Whispers of the Old Gods expansion, including the various ways to buff the C’thun legendary minion, as well as the new “Forbidden” spells, Forbidden Flame and Forbidden Shaping, both of which spend all available mana and have effects based on the amount of mana consumed.

Whether or not these mechanics are here to stay remains to be seen, but they will likely have a major impact on the Hearthstone metagame for some time.

Image courtesy of Blizzard Entertainment Inc